The story of Exeter's blitz looters revealed

NEW research has thrown a shocking shadow over Exeter's reputation during the Second World War bombing blitz that devastated the city.

Investigations by Exeter University historian Dr Todd Gray shows that looting of bombed properties was carried out throughout the city by residents.

Dr Gray has just completed the first study of looting during the Second World War. It shows the practise took the country by surprise in the summer of 1940 and continued until the end of the war.

He found that in Exeter looting took place before the great blitz of May 1942. The looters included children and those in positions of trust.

He tells how Inspector Steer of the Exeter Constabulary came across the first looter.

"He found a 12-year-old boy with a bulging coat which turned out to contain a clock and snuffbox. The boy claimed the clock was lying discarded in the street, but subsequently admitted to taking it from a bombed house. His excuse was a cat had led him astray.

He said: "The front was blown in and I heard a cat inside. I tried to find it and then saw the clock in a bedroom. The snuffbox was in the garden."

His mother explained that he was very fond of cats and a member of the Dumb Friends League. The judge placed him on probation for two years, made him pay costs and bound his mother as a guarantor of his good behaviour.

Other prosecutions followed. One looter, a 17-year-old who lived in Cowick Street, told a constable: "I have stolen a number of neckties, five in all. I found them in the gutter on the morning of May 4 following the raid."

The judge decided he had taken them from bombed premises and kept the boy in remand with a view to his going to Borstal. The charge book showed he had committed the crime on April 25, one of the earlier raids before the great blitz."

At the end of May, a 38-year-old carpenter was accused of taking food from a shop in Blackboy Road.

While magistrates at the juvenile court were lenient with four boys and a girl, aged between 11 and 13, who took dishes, plates, basins, saucers, polishes and other goods from bombed properties. They claimed an adult had given them permission.

The magistrate said it was understandable children were tempted by goods lying about weeks after the bombings.

On the same day, the mayor was less tolerant of a 17-year-old and his mother.

The man was accused of looting and his mother was charged with receiving stolen goods. The family had themselves lost most of their possessions in the blitz and the teenager said he and another boy took the items because he thought his mother would want them.

The mayor said: "It is bad enough for people to be bombed out, or burned out, of their houses without getting their things stolen. It is very cowardly to steal from people who, perhaps, are in worse trouble than the thieves themselves. A lot of looting has been going on and it has got to stop."

Dr Gray, whose other works include Blackshirts in Devon, said: "While looting was realised at the time as an unfortunate part of the Home Front it has been all but forgotten today.

"It runs counter to the feeling that the country was unified in its struggle against German fascism. This history of looting is an uncomfortable aspect of the past but to ignore it is to diminish that generation's struggle and realisation that during the midst of the war there were fellow citizens who took advantage of bombing opportunities to pursue self-interest."

Looting in Wartime Britain is published by The Mint Press via Stevensbooks at www.stevensbooks.co.uk or 01392 459760.

For more details call 01392 272727.